Can you ID the author?

[rockworm 0]

Every year about this time I mix up a few batches of dubbing wax specifically for tying soft-hackle flies. And as usual I made more than I will need. So I propose to package up a selection of waxes and offer them as prizes to whoever is first to identify the author of the following quotes. (I will give one a day until Halloween.) The first quote should be familiar to most:

 

"Fish fine and far off is the principle rule of trout angling."

[jad74606 0]

Every year about this time I mix up a few batches of dubbing wax specifically for tying soft-hackle flies. And as usual I made more than I will need. So I propose to package up a selection of waxes and offer them as prizes to whoever is first to identify the author of the following quotes. (I will give one a day until Halloween.)

 

The first quote should be familiar to most:

 

"Fish fine and far off is the principle rule of trout angling"

 

 

Izaak Walton

[rockworm 0]

Sorry. Walton is not the author.

[jad74606 0]

Charles Cotton

[NJ All Day 0]

Charles Cotton

I think he's got it.

[rockworm 0]

By jove! I think he's got it! Charles Cotton included that gem in his contribution to Walton's famous book, The Compleat Angler.

 

jad- PM me your address.

[jad74606 0]

Hi Rockworm,

Thanks for holding the giveaway. I'm glad I won, I tie alot of soft hackles and look forward to giving a new blend of wax a try. Thanks Again, Have a great evening!

Jeff

[rockworm 0]

The second quote is somewhat more obscure. But I think one of you should recognize the author's style:

 

"The trout were rising avidly to a heavy spinner flight, and I took seven browns from thirteen to eighteen inches. The fish came as fast as I could preen my fly back into shape and make another cast. The whole once-in-a-lifetime show was watched by a salmon-egging tourist who had gone fishless on the bridge. I am quite sure he was converted to the dry-fly technique. It is such a lucky episode as this that cements one's reputation as an angler."

 

 

 

[professori 0]

The second quote is somewhat more obscure. But I think one of you should recognize the author's style:

 

"The trout were rising avidly to a heavy spinner flight, and I took seven browns from thirteen to eighteen inches. The fish came as fast as I could preen my fly back into shape and make another cast. The whole once-in-a-lifetime show was watched by a salmon-egging tourist who had gone fishless on the bridge. I am quite sure he was converted to the dry-fly technique. It is such a lucky episode as this that cements one's reputation as an angler."

 

 

 

 

 

Sounds to me like the writing of Robert Haig-Brown.

[rockworm 0]

It does sound like Haig-Brown, doesn't it. But its not.

 

Here's a big hint: Haig-Brown was old enough to be our author's father.

[DaddyO 0]

The second quote is somewhat more obscure. But I think one of you should recognize the author's style:

 

"The trout were rising avidly to a heavy spinner flight, and I took seven browns from thirteen to eighteen inches. The fish came as fast as I could preen my fly back into shape and make another cast. The whole once-in-a-lifetime show was watched by a salmon-egging tourist who had gone fishless on the bridge. I am quite sure he was converted to the dry-fly technique. It is such a lucky episode as this that cements one's reputation as an angler."

 

 

 

 

John Gierach?

[rockworm 0]

Nope. Our author was just barely old enough to have been Gierach's father.

[rockworm 0]

Another quote from the same author:

 

"I struck, and a large fish rolled in the shallows. He was at least twenty inches long; and it was a very brief cat-and-mouse struggle, with myself in the rodent's role."

 

[rockworm 0]

OK. Maybe the author's style is not as recognizable as I thought. So here's a quote with a bit more substance to it:

 

"The fish were quickly dressed, and I collected their stomachs in the grass. My father brought me a white soup plate, and my field supply of alcohol mixed with a touch of glycerin. Study them in this, he suggested. Their food supply should show up clearly.

 

I sliced the first stomach. Look at this!

 

It was stuffed tight as a sausage with pale-brownish nymphs, and I squeezed them out like toothpaste into the alcohol. There were almost a hundred in the first three fish alone. What are they? asked my father. The stomach contents of the fourth fish was the same.

 

Stoneflies, I answered. Filled with their nymphs."

[fishingbobnelson 0]

John D. Voelker, AKA Robert Traver?